I confess. I was surprised to learn that Jim Vick is a leading candidate -- the leading candidate? -- to replace Mike McIntosh as assistant principal/athletic director at YHS. I understand that he has the support of Superintendent Dr. James Hawkins.
I like Dr. Hawkins and I trust his judgment. But then I remember former YHS principal Dr. Layne Hunt. And I hesitate. Surely, I say to no one in particular, Dr. Hawkins wouldn't hire another principal who withholds information from parents? And yet the record shows Jim Vick did precisely that as the EMU vice president responsible during the investigation into the death of Laura Dickinson.
I considered that Dr. Hawkins might have some kind of inside knowledge, some kind of guarantee, that Mr. Vick as YHS assistant principal would perform at a higher standard. As I now try to live a life of lovingkindness and forgiveness, I also want to believe in the power of redemption. And I remember that my father's career in newspapers ended forever in his mid-thirties due to a mistake he made. Perhaps Mr. Vick could use another chance; perhaps some charity toward him would be okay.
On the other hand, I remembered last year when I was honored to serve on the committee charged with finding three YHS science teachers. We were highly selective because we
could be highly selective and because we wanted to find the
best teachers who would be the
best fit for our science department. Of the 100+ applicants I think we interviewed 12 and asked six finalists to teach a lesson to a hand-picked group of students. I would have been pleased with any of the six candidates. The process gave us three new, well-qualified, engaging teachers who have, by all accounts, become assets to the YHS faculty. Had Mr. Vick been one of the candidates, I believe he would not have been interviewed or, being interviewed, would not have been asked to teach a lesson. The competition was so keen that we could have avoided wrestling with the moral questions. And so I would have to ask: are there no other candidates? Is Mr. Vick really the best of all possible choices? Thanks to my dear friend Amy*, I have an answer to all these relativistic issues.
Today I received an email containing a letter to the school board from EMU Prof. Mark Higbee. Prof. Higbee, you may remember, is a friend of Ypsilanti Public Schools; he chaired the Braves logo committee and authored one of the committee's reports. I find him to be thoughtful and persuasive, especially in this letter. (I believe that Prof. Higbee gave permission to circulate his letter. I will delete it if I learn otherwise.)
July 16, 2008
Dear School Board Members and District Administrators,
News reports that former EMU Vice Preisdent James Vick is being seriously considered for an important job at Ypsilanti High School have alarmed many people in the school district and at EMU, and around the state as well. Hiring Mr. Vick would needlessly associate the Ypsilanti School District with the worst scandal in the history of education in the state of Michigan: namely, the concealment from the public by EMU officials for 10 weeks of the fact that a student had been raped and murdered in her dorm room. This cover up continued for 10 weeks, and resulted in coast to coast media coverage. It also inflicted needless pain on the parents and loved ones of Laura Dickinson. EMU officials, led by Jim Vick, mislead the family and community into thinking that her death was being investigated as a medical mystery, rather than as a probable murder.
Please accept this copy of the Butzel Long report, issued 13 months ago by the law firm hired at great expense by EMU Regents to independently investigate EMU officials' response to the murder of Laura Dickinson. Perhaps Mr. Vick attached a copy to his letter of application. It is relevant to your deliberations on whether to hire Mr. Vick. The report, as well as much news reporting in 2007, make it clear that EMU police and other law enforcement from December 15, 2006 -- when Laura's body was discovered - recognized this death as a probable homicide; but EMU officials denied this truth to the public, to EMU students, and to Ms. Dickinson's parents. While Vick has said he did nothing wrong, the facts suggest that he did a lot wrong:
-- Page 20 of the Butzel Long (BL) report states that "Regardless of disputes or discrepancies about the details, it is undisputed that Mr. Vick acquired sufficient information that evening [on the day Laura Dickinson's dead body was found] that led him to believe that homicide was a possibility. However, Mr. Vick did not communicate that possibility to either Mr. Fallon or Mr. Dickinson."
-- Further, Butzel Long (p. 20) reports that, according to Mr. Vick, the father of Laura Dickinson asked him directly on December 15, 2006, "Was she killed?" To which "Mr. Vick said he told Mr. Dickinson in response there was no evidence of violence." Yet at that time numerous police investigators were collecting criminal evidence and the Medical Examiner's Scene Investigation Report signed that day stated plainly, "Foul Play Suspected." If Mr. Vick did not, somehow, on the day the police investigation began, realize that it was a criminal investigation, he surely learned so soon thereafter; and he should then have immediately informed the parents and public of the truth.
-- But not only did Mr. Vick mislead the young woman's parents in person on that day, he continued to mislead them for weeks to come.
-- The Medical Examiner's Scene Investigation Report, dated Dec. 15, states clearly that the body was "Found Dead in Dorm Room -- Foul Play Suspected." The next day EMU officials posted a false claim that "no foul play was suspected" on the University web site. Exhibit in Butzel Long Report.
-- For 10 weeks neither the family nor the EMU and Ypsilanti communities were told what Mr. Vick and his staff knew: that the death was being investigated as a probable murder. The body was found half naked, lying on the floor, with a pillow covering half the face; her room was locked and her keys missing.
-- Not informing the public of this crime was an egregious violation of Federal law and of common law enforcement practice, and it resulted in the highest fines ever imposed by the Federal government under the Clery Act.
-- During that ten weeks, a murderer was at large, but the public had been told there was no murder.
-- Mr. Vick directed subordinates in his office to shred a police report that described the crime scene as just that -- a crime scene (BL report, pps 32-36) rather than let that police report be circulated.
-- On December 20, 2006 the ANN ARBOR NEWS quoted the medical examiner as saying that violence was not ruled out as the cause of death, contradicting EMU's "no foul play" suspected statement of Dec.16). Mr. Vick responded to the online version of this entirely factual news article by emailing a group of EMU officials to say "this doesn’t help at all, in fact [it] makes the PR situation worse than it was before." (emphasis added). Mr. Vick asked these administrators for advice on "what I can say" to Laura Dickinson's parents when he went to attend their daughter's funeral that afternoon. (pps 29-30 & Exhibit 16).
-- In short, on Dec. 20 Mr. Vick was concerned about how to "spin" the facts to the grieving parents while attending the funeral. He did not take the clear and moral path of informing them of the truth. How can a person who made that choice be involved in the education of young people?
-- At no time did Mr. Vick tell those parents the truth: that their daughter's death was being investigated as a probable murder. The evidence suggests that Mr. Vick devoted much time to trying to minimize what he called "the PR situation" and no time to ensuring that the truth be told, to the Dickinson family and to the broader EMU and Ypsilanti communities. Thus he and others at EMU caused the University to betray the public's trust and to violate the federal Clery Act.
-- As late as Feb. 26, 2007, soon after the EMU student who killed Laura had been arrested, Mr. Vick was, in emails sent to parents of EMU students, falsely claiming that at the time of the discovery of the body "there were no apparent indications of foul play." He added that in "any police investigation the need to balance the community's right to know without jeopardizing the investigation is paramount." (pp 56, Butzel Long). Lying about whether a crime was being investigated has not, law enforcement officials assert, ever been accepted or common practice, no matter how often Mr. Vick said it was needed in this case. At a public forum at EMU in March 2007, deputy prosecutor Steven Hiller agreed that denying a crime was being investigated was not acceptable conduct. That Mr. Vick and other EMU officials would try to excuse their own dishonesty by saying it was needed to protect the integrity of a criminal investigation shows how flawed their judgment and their morals were, and how little respect they have for law enforcement officials' professionalism.
-- When the truth was finally made known to the public and the murder suspect arrested on Feb. 23, Mr. Vick stuck to his plans for a vacation out of state to a warmer area; he left Michigan the next day. This is mentioned in the Butzel Long report. There is no public record that I am aware of how the parents of Laura Dickinson, or her younger brothers, or her other loved ones, spent the day after they learned that Laura had been murdered and raped, rather than having died of unknown medical causes, as EMU officials had deceitfully suggested.
Jim Vick was a University Vice President whose duties included providing for the security and safety of EMU. As VP, he and his staff had plainly failed to adequately secure students' safety on campus. The person who killed Laura Dickinson had previously been arrested on campus for several crimes, including drug dealing and burglary, but the student judicial services that reported to Mr. Vick had retained this student at EMU. Then, after Laura Dickinson was killed, instead of telling the truth, Mr. Vick intensely considered what he called "the public relations situation" -- and lied.
This conduct may be forgivable, but if so, only by a higher power: Such horrendous acts, such terrible decisions, such inexcusable dishonesty toward parents who had lost their daughter, cannot be forgiven by anyone who has authority for the safety and well-being of school children or students of any age.
I urge the Ypsilanti School Board to reject Mr. Vick's application for this position. Nobody who has done their homework could conclude that Mr. Vick is suitable for such a job. The District cannot afford the risks that would plainly come with hiring a man who is one of the nation's best known examples of a moral failure of leadership to ever arise from any educational institution.
Sincerely yours,
Mark D. Higbee
Professor of History, EMU
I needed that. I needed to be reminded that outrage is the appropriate reaction to Jim Vick's perfidy. I needed to be reminded of the solidarity I felt with the Dickinson family and all EMU parents and students. But as to forgiveness, I had to refer to Buddhist teacher Jack Kornfield:
Remember these truths:
Forgiveness is not weak or naive.
Forgiveness requires courage and clarity; it is not naive. Mistakenly people believe that to forgive is to simply "forgive and forget," once and for all. This is not the wisdom of forgiveness.
Forgiveness does not happen quickly.
For great injustice, coming to forgiveness may include a long process of grief, outrage, sadness, loss, and pain.
True forgiveness does not paper over what has happened in a superficial way. It is not a misguided effort to suppress or ignore our pain. It cannot be hurried. It is a deep process repeated over and over in our heart which honors the grief and betrayal, and in its own time ripens into the freedom to truly forgive.
Forgiveness does not forget, nor does it condone the past.
Forgiveness sees wisely. It willingly acknowledges what is unjust, harmful, and wrong. It bravely recognizes the sufferings of the past, and understands the conditions that brought them about. There is a strength to forgiveness. When we forgive we can also say, "Never again will I allow these things to happen." We may resolve to never again permit such harm to come to ourselves or another.
Forgiveness does not mean that we have to continue to relate to those who have done us harm.
In some cases the best practice may be to end our connection, to never speak to or be with a harmful person again. Sometimes in the process of forgiveness a person who hurt or betrayed us may wish to make amends, but even this does not require us to put ourselves in the way of further harm.
In the end, forgiveness simply means never putting another person out of our heart.
--from The Art of Forgiveness, Lovingkindness, and Peace; Bantam, 2002
Kornfield might have added that we can forgive someone without hiring him.
As I said, my father's newspaper career ended because he made a mistake. That happens sometimes. And while I can wish that Mr. Vick gets a chance to redeem himself I, as an EMU alumnus, as a parent of a YHS student, as a resident of Ypsilanti, am under no obligation to give him that opportunity.
And with that, I will ask the school board to thank Mr. Vick for his interest in working for Ypsilanti Public Schools but decline his application to be the assistant principal/athletic director at Ypsilanti High School. Please join me and other concerned parents in the board meeting room Monday, July 21 at 7 p.m.
*Thanks, Amy, for rousing my conscience and informing me. I oughta pay more attention. :^)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Update, 7/22/2008
At last night's BOE meeting, the motion to hire Mr. Vick failed on a rather speedy and somewhat mumbled voice vote. I imagine that the trustees weren't pleased with being put in that position.
Labels: Ypsilanti schools
